Workers' Liberty parades confusion on referendum
"Definitely a critical maybe"
The June issue of Workers Liberty devoted 12 pages to a discussion of what WL supporters should have advocated in the May Referendum in the North of Ireland.
The majority, for a series of dodgy reasons, advocated a "Yes" vote, while their chief theoretician, Sean Matgamna, appears to advocate abstention: having strongly argued against a "Yes" vote, he cannot bring himself to call for a "No" vote.
The starting point for the majority is that the main problem in the North of Ireland is the division between Catholics and Protestants: "at worst (what the Stormont Agreement does) is to institutionalise the sectarian conflict at the heart of Northern Ireland Society. At best it provides a new framework in which the leading communal politicians on each side can manage the conflict" The only alternative "is a return to sectarian war"
Of course, it’s a critical "Yes". The WL majority declare themselves against this "…continuation of the long bourgeois attempt to create what they (the bourgeoisie) consider to be an irritating and irrational national problem" (my emphasis).
The discussion that follows contains some real gems such as this, from Martin Thomas:
"The Yes meant not Yes to a partial or limited step in working class activity, but Yes to the London and Dublin governments as the accredited active forces in this ‘stage’ of development, after which we hope will come the workers stage"
Shades of the Kim Ill Sung-loving Workers Party here?
The big problem for the WL is correctly identified by Matgamna – how do you vote for a bourgeois solution without taking responsibility for it?
An even bigger problem is if this is a bourgeois solution, why doesn’t Matgamna advocate a vote against?
Of course, we are not against any and every proposal from the bourgeoisie: stopping the Orangemen at Drumcree would be supported by all socialists.
However, WL’s public angst about voting "Yes" - which, it has to be said, is the logical consequence of their position on Ireland –- comes from precisely this flawed understanding of what the British bourgeoisie is up to in Ireland.
For all the sophistication with which both sides appear to weigh the subtleties of voting "Yes", they are strangely crude in their understanding of the British State. It is assumed on both sides that the British want reform so that they can get on with the business of exploitation.
Imperialism seems to have disappeared, and what’s left is a rather benign and put-upon British ruling class pressing change on a reluctant, unresponsive (and ungrateful) region.
The point of course is that, like the original settlement in 1921, the current deal is designed precisely to prevent working class unity, to preserve (slightly reformed and updated) the cross class alliance which is Unionism/Loyalism, and to tie Irish workers, "Protestant" and "Catholic", into an ongoing alliance with the British ruling class. The fact that some Unionists such as Ian Paisley do not see that "I value the Union" Blair is attempting to reform the union in order to preserve it, shouldn’t confuse anyone.
Because WL focus on sectarianism simply as an idea in people’s heads rather than making a serious materialist analysis they run themselves into all kinds of bother on the national question in Scotland or on European unity.
To take the example of Scotland: devolution is designed not (as WL believe) for the democratisation of the British state, but its very opposite. WL’s support for devolution sounds like the Liberal Democrats.
The reasons given by Matgamna for not advocating a "No" vote are that not only would it appear to be against the popular vote for peace, it would also be to line up behind Paisley and the Protestant intransigents.
Yet neither he nor the other "abstainers" actually believe that this deal will bring about peace. The most it will do – and this is a view shared by all sides in this argument – is stop military action by the IRA.
Here’s the rub: the only real benefit of the "peace" agreement is to stop the war, by which they mean the activities of the IRA. In fact you’d think, reading some of the contributions, that the IRA are the main problem in the North of Ireland.
But for the IRA, WL seem to believe, "normal class politics" could have led to working class unity and perhaps outright revolution long ago.
If the main problem in Ireland is not British imperialism but the IRA’s demand for Irish unity, the solution must be to abolish the national question.
WL advocate a kind of cantonisation of Northern Ireland within the UK: "we advocate a federal united Ireland, with self rule for Protestant majority areas, coupled with closer, perhaps confederal, links between the UK and independent Ireland to reassure the Irish (Protestant) minority." (My emphasis)
In short, give independence to the "Protestants" and bring the rest of Ireland back into the UK: self determination and "independence" for the "Protestant" minority, while denying it to the "Catholic" majority in Ireland as a whole. Even bourgeois democrats, let alone "revolutionary" socialists, would be hard put to sell this particular deal.
But the cat is out of this particular bag in the very first contribution to this debate. It is not just the bourgeoisie who view the conflict in the Six Counties as an irritating and irrational national problem – so do WL!
For them, the real basis of the conflict is that "Catholics" and "Protestants" are fighting each other for irrational and obscure reasons which cannot be understood in class terms.
Therefore WL wish they would just stop and behave like the British. Taken to its logical conclusion there would be less sectarianism if the Irish would rejoin the UK.
Matagamna is now realising where this is leading: a revolutionary socialist group which allies itself with the British bourgeoisie in helping to contain (and perhaps liquidate) an anti imperialist struggle in Ireland.
But this is a monster of his own creation. Sectarianism is not just an idea in people’s heads: it has a real material basis. Once you lose sight of this it is easy to slip into the categories of "Catholic" and "Protestant", to fall for the propaganda line of the British ruling class who peddle it to justify their own "peacekeeping" – and in the end to capitulate to the very sectarianism you oppose, by voting "yes" to an agreement which institutionalises it.
Ireland has always been the acid test for British revolutionaries. This is make-your-mind-up time for the WL minority – and especially for Sean Matgamna.